Strategy
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Gambits are often said to be 'offered' to an opponent, and that offer is then said to be either 'accepted' or 'declined.' If a player who is offered a gambit captures the piece (and thus gains material) the gambit is said to be accepted. If the player who was offered the gambit ignores it and instead continues his or her development, then the gambit is said to be declined.
In modern chess, the typical response to a moderately sound gambit is to accept the material and give the material back at an advantageous time. For gambits that are less sound, the accepting player is more likely to try to hold onto his extra material. A rule of thumb often found in various primers on chess suggests that a player should get three moves (see tempo) of development for a sacrificed pawn, but it is unclear how useful this general maxim is since the "free moves" part of the compensation is almost never the entirety of what the gambiteer gains. Of course, a player is not obliged to accept a gambit. Often, a gambit can be declined without disadvantage.
Read more about this topic: Gambit
Famous quotes containing the word strategy:
“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.”
—Colin Powell (b. 1937)
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)
“That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)